"When I was a kid, Midnight Cowboy was one of my favourite films. Especially the end of Midnight Cowboy, when Jon Voight is riding the bus to Miami. It has that thing again, the loneliness and idealism of the American life, the death of the dream, the bleak scenes. Fred Neil wrote the original song but Harry Nilsson’s version just brings it to life. It’s a song I find hard to be objective about, because it’s been my favourite song since I was a kid, ever since seeing the film. Harry Nilsson’s version has more of the bittersweet, longing feeling. It’s a great song in general, but I associate his version with a strong set of visuals, especially watching the film as a kid. The songs that have the most powerful emotional impact are the ones that surprise you. I’m not listening for artistic inspiration to make a record, but for the feeling. When I’m making a record I completely stop listening to music. When I’m gathering ideas, I can’t listen to music because I have too many other things in my head, I can’t listen to other people’s records. Maybe a bit of classical, but that’s really it. So with my favourite music, it’s not necessarily the ones that make you feel excited or hyper, it’s more the ones that get you in your chest or your stomach, the ones that get you in that way and are impossible to ignore. That’s what I would want people to feel with the songs that I’ve written."

"It’s hard for me to narrow it down to my favorite directors and favorite actors, too, but I love Matt Dillon. I love Beautiful Girls and I love Flamingo Kid — he’s responsible for a lot of my favorites, but I’m gonna have to pick Drugstore Cowboy. I saw it when I was a kid and I felt like it was such a different culture than any that I’d ever been exposed to, and I felt like instantly I was a part of it — even though I had no frame of reference. I mean, I wasn’t a “kid,” I was 14 or 15. I had started getting into, you know, that sort of pretentious high school literate phase where you start reading, like, Kerouac and Ginsberg and, I don’t know — I loved that world, that romanticized, thuggy, kind of petty crime world. I really romanticized it myself and just wanted to be a part of that world; there was something exciting about that for me. And I love the way it’s shot. I love the drugged out scenes; I love the way [Gus Van Sant] shoots with cut-outs, those kind of simple, free-floating cut-outs to convey the psychedelic scenes. It was one of my very first exposures to that style of filmmaking that was a lot more patient and took its time and allowed itself to breathe. And from there I got into, like Hal Hartley and the independent movies of the ’90s. But my love of that type of film all started with Drugstore Cowboy."

"The most undersung songwriting genius ever in British pop. I had the privilege of hanging out with Kirtsy on a number of occasions and I have to say, she was the bomb. We usually got into trouble somewhere along the line. She couldn't understand why she wasn't more popular and nether could I, but this album kinds of explains it really. Songs like '15 Minutes'… she kinda knew that pop would eat itself, and she was too talented and beautiful for the fickle superficial pop world. 'Don't Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim' needs to be covered by a mega country artist. The backing vocals on 'Dancing In Limbo' are sublime and 'Le Foret De Mimosa' makes me cry."

"Braveheart was another one that sort of encapsulates a lot of themes, and it’s very cinematic, it’s beautiful. I love the simplicity of that world, I’m a cowboy at heart. And I just love the idea of sort of, like, meat and hands and dirt and filth. I think the action was tremendous and violent and brutal. I thought the love story was delicate and romantic and beautiful and deeply felt. I love the sort of underdog themes: every man in his circumstance, these are things that sort of run deep in my body. The performances were great. I feel like if I was born in another era, it would be in that time or it’s a time I would like to be in. Really, really fantastic."

"Ives's 114 Songs has been a major source of inspiration for me (particularly for my 69 Love Songs and 50 Song Memoir). But that wasn't all he wrote: from 1887 to 1926 Ives wrote 193 songs, and here they all are on six CDs: lullabies, Christmas carols, German operetta emulations, mortal laments, parlor ballads, cowboy dirges, and even election-day commentary on 'Nov. 2, 1920 (An Election)', and 'Vote for Names! Names! Names!', of which Ives says, ""The [three] pianos represent three political candidates, each uttering his own 'hot air slogan'; the singer represents the disillusioned voter."" The texts come 80% from poets (Keats, Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many anonymous sources) and 20% from Ives himself, whose aw-shucks Americana (as on 'Slugging A Vampire') and gleefully jarring harmonies keep the surprises genuinely surprising. "